The Start of Spring Break

…at the beach. Kids are staying the whole week with Grandma and Grandpa. I’m spending the weekends. Made it a long weekend, stayed over on Monday. It’s just the typical Spring Break in Oregon thing… dashes outside to play between rain squalls.

The pace of life at the beach place slows down immensely. It’s another world. We sleep a bit more, but still get up relatively early. Saturday, for example, I was awake just before dawn, watching the light come up through the window of my bedroom while still snuggled down under a quilt that my Mom had made by hand.

We do physical stuff at the beach, whether it’s work or play. We washed and detailed FOUR vehicles over the weekend, and we built a play fort in the side yard. The kids ran with the dogs outside whenever the rain let up.

And when it rained, we moved inside to feed our brains. The television showed Discovery channel and History channel; R spent time researching the history of the Trail of Tears forced march. M studied videos on how to do magic tricks with strings and cards. We also laid out a plan for ultra-lightweight survival packs that fit inside a coat pocket or a fanny pack, and learned more about tsunamis by studying footage of the recent Japanese events. Then we spent some time discussing how a similar tsunami might affect our house at the beach.

As I write this, I’m back home, ready for my work week. I try to hold on to the beauty of the beach pace. It’s hard, but it’s worth it. It’s not the speed, but the ability to pay full attention to something or someone important. Whether it’s the loving dog, or the child, or my parents, or a friend I hold dear. It’s about getting my thoughts squared up in “the present” and then keeping them there. Yes, there’s a future to plan for, and there’s a past to learn from. But the real impact is what I do RIGHT NOW. And a faster present does not always make for a better future.

Swedish Crème Cookies

It started like this, a question from M, over breakfast at the “Doghouse”**

“Dad, where can we get Swedish Crème Cookies?”

The conversation went from there. Seemed that a character in a book she’d just read gets pelted with Swedish Crème Cookies (SCCs) that a friend throws from up in a tree. M wants to know what they look like and where we might get some.

“Dunno” is the answer to both questions. We look it up. The recipe is quite straightforward, and they look yummy. So we all decide to make some. A quick trip to the store to get a couple cookie sheets, vegetable food coloring, almond extract and extra butter, and we’re in business making Swedish Crème Cookies. Everyone in the house lends a hand. M is having a blast. It’s her project, and everyone else helps, but defers to her ultimate decisions. She decides on blue and raspberry colored frosting for the centers. Because it’s her first time with the food coloring, M gets a bit carried away with the quantities, leaving the frosting a very intensely blue and vivid red-purple. Oh well, that’s how we learn. And, it’s vegetable coloring anyway, so that’s fine. The cookie dough was really stiff, so I had to do the rolling pin part. D guided the baking process throughout. Lola, the Beagle, cleaned the floor.

Total output: about 14 SCCs.

So, how were they? They turned out great! The frosting was a bit soft, so D refrigerated them. We had them for Saturday evening dessert. The first impulse as you held a blue SCC in your hand was to lick off the frosting that poked out around the edges. As soon as you did that, however, you were tattooed! It was like the exploding ink packets they put in the money they give to bank robbers – marked irrefutably by the SCC. You can see the evidence In this photo:  blue tongues abound!

The blue tongue thing became a bit of a focal point, to be honest. Suddenly the kids were working the blue frosting for maximum tongue/tooth impact. Notice, however, that they did a remarkable job keeping the frosting color to the INSIDES of their mouths, which is saying something because the USDA could have used this frosting to stamp their approvals on the sides of beef or something.

Leave it to R to take it all to the next logical conclusion. One SCC, pulled apart to make “Tommy”-esque eyes to go with the blue tongue. The SCC did NOT suffer from the vivisection – it was consumed immediately after the photo was taken.

 

Needless to say, toothbrushing was incredibly thorough on Saturday night: any residual food particles practically iridesced blue color. Dads could to tooth inspection from across the room this time around!

Four SCCs survived the Saturday evening onslaught, to be used in Monday morning lunches.

 

 

** without much real explanation as to their reasoning, the kids now refer to Dad’s house as “The Doghouse”. It just seemed to happen organically. It fits.

Peace of Mind

We helped out some friends this weekend. Their rental house has a wonderfully landscaped yard, needing some of that springtime attention to help launch the yard on the right path for summer. But, 9 month-pregnant momma-to-be was in early stages of labor. This just would not do. So we went over to their house on Saturday and did the yard work with them. When we left, the grass was mowed and edged, lots of weeds had been pulled. Plants that didn’t survive the winter were removed; some replacements planted. Color spots from the nursery were put in the ground an hanger baskets, and all the winter accumulation of leaves and yard debris from all the storms was taken out. They were ready to enjoy the yard, while concentrating on the new arrival and the parade of family and friends that comes with the baby. They had a noticeably high level of peace-of-mind when we left.

That felt really, really good.

M’s rehearsals have gone well. They’re still on the fence as to whether she’s an understudy or a cast member. Regardless of which she ultimately is, this has already turned out well. We all have a good feeling about that.

R left on Sunday for Outdoor School. Six days of environmental awareness education along the Sandy River east of Portland. He’s going to have a blast. He might just come back a little disappointed once he realizes how much environmental awareness he already possesses.  Even if he’s a little disappointed, he’ll have the validation that he’s knowledgeable and increasingly expert.

The rest of the Typhoon spent Sunday working on our own house. Two different neighbors stopped to say ‘hi’ and to comment that they’re glad we’re back. They can tell we’re back because the yard already looks so nice. They’re thankful for that. We did some landscape planning and some cleanup. I took out the seven small junipers that C has always hated. We’re planning for something new, but we don’t yet know what.

I got the cars washed, too. M helped a little bit. Both got washed on the outside; the Jag got vacuumed out in the cabin and the trunk. Then I washed both sets of floor mats, and sprayed vinyl protectant on the rubber mats … same stuff that makes the tires look all shiny. The mats never looked better. A little protectant on the shielding under the hood, and my car looks showroom new again.

Most of the day, however, was spent on the garage.

See, the garage still is full of ‘stuff’ left over from the move: extra appliances; boxes of tax paperwork old enough to be discarded but still with us; clothes ready for donate/resale/hand-down; and the like.  We managed to get a bunch of stuff onto the shelves, and consolidated/culled a bunch more. We have three loads of stuff to go to donation, and will post the appliances to craigslist this week. Once the donations are gone, and the appliances are sold, we should be able to get one car into the garage. Both cars? Well, that’s a different story. That’ll require phase two of the culling of the contents of the garage.

While we worked on the garage, M shared that she’d like to become a vegetarian. She doesn’t want to eat meat that had to die to make the food. She’s okay with vegetables, fruit and beans. She’s okay with eating eggs and milk because no animal ‘died’. She wants to include bacon and sausage and fish. In other words, she wants to avoid most pork, most poultry and all beef. That’s her idea of vegetarianism. She’s a lacto-ouvo-baco-sauso-pesca-vegetarian. Uh huh…

Well, far be it for us to put that down in any way. While R (the vegephobe) is at Outdoor School, we’ll use this as a family project to explore lacto-ouvo-vegetarian eating habits. M can see for herself how a vegetarian puts together the right foods to make for a balanced diet. This’ll be fun. And it’ll be informative for M. Then, she can decide what she really wants to do, and feel peaceful about her decisions.

So, we feel pretty good about where we are. It was great to be of service to someone else at a valuable and critical time. We spread lots of peace-of-mind this weekend. And for that, we were blessed with peace-of-mind in return.

Boy Scouts, Beverly Beach, Burgeoning Blessings and Busy Bounties

As evidenced by the photo above, the Typhoon boys enjoyed the rare treat of a tw0-night Boy Scout campout this weekend. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, this is the Oregon Coast on January 23rd. Temperatures were in the low 50’s.

We yurt camped at Beverly Beach State Park, and enjoyed an  AMAZINGLY MILD Saturday. The sky was blue, the winds were calm, and we hung around the fire in shirt sleeves. Nice.

The boys in the troop ate well. To support their work on Emergency Preparedness merit badge, they held both a lost “child” drill and a fire building contest. They found the “child”. And they all succeeded in building fires, though none of the teams achieved the contest goal. Mind you, troop adults set a very lofty goal for the fire building contest, on purpose.  By all accounts, the events were a success.

Saturday dinner included a kebab appetizer, chicken & white bean chili entree, fruit and carrots on the side, dutch oven cornbread, and either strawberry or cherry cheesecake for dessert. We uh, had too much food.  Time to rethink portions!

Late Saturday night, though, the storm rolled in. Even though we had rain in the morning, everyone stayed dry in the yurts. Here’s R, preparing to bunk down in the yurt on Saturday evening.

*  *  *  *  *

Us boys made a stop in Pacific City on the way home. My mom is going in for a (relatively) routine angiogram on Friday. Furthermore, the plans to let the kids spend some weekends at the beach before spring have become more difficult to realize now that M has rehearsals on Saturdays again. So, we made sure to stop in. We had lunch, chatted and watched the Jets game with Grandpa, borrowed the shower, and helped Grandma fix some minor issues with her computer.  Then we headed home. We were close; it makes me happy to see them face-t0-face whenEVER possible. It makes R happy, too. Every time he walks into that house, he begs to stay at least two days!

More Quiet. Quiet Will Be Our Theme, I Suspect

Paradigms are powerful because they create the lens through which we see the world. The power of a paradigm shift is the essential power of quantum change, whether that shift is an instantaneous or a slow and deliberate process.

- Stephen Covey

Our newest international student arrived over the weekend. Her initials are MF, so that’s how I’ll refer to her in any posts. She’s from Japan. lives just North of Nagoya, and is studying English at Marylhurst for one month. Her English is terrific, and she’s a doll.

Even though she arrived on Saturday morning, MF stayed awake to get acquainted with her new family. Probably a good thing; she slept through the night and woke up about noon on Sunday. Good sleep will cure the jet lag fastest!

Sunday morning, C explored making crab cakes from Julee Russo’s New Basics cookbook. It was about a four hour process, as C worked through the recipe for the first time. This recipe really worked C’s cooking muscles. Not only did she make the crab cakes from scratch, but the Hollandaise sauce was from scratch, too. I suspect that C was a bit apprehensive about making something like a Hollandaise – it’s such a delicate thing. But as she figured her way through the recipe, I kept hearing her say things like “hey, this is pretty easy. As long as we don’t burn the butter, we’re fine.” And she was right. We had fun. MF helped; I helped; the kids helped and felt drawn to hang around the happy action in the kitchen.

The reward at the end of the whole process was some scrumptious food, to be sure. That, and a confidence boost for the lady of the house.

This was in addition to the homemade ham soup C made this weekend as well. I’m telling you, C seems to be discovering her inner cook in some new and  delightful ways.

Since cancer, C has dutifully prepared meals, but not really been a cook. And for good reason, if you’ve been nearby through her process of cancer and recovery. But now, she’s feeling better after the most recent surgeries. And she’s cooking as a result. Cooking with a complexity and completeness in her meals that she never aimed for in the past.

*  *  *  *

R had a bit of an active weekend, but in low-key sort of way. The annual Troop 22 fund raiser – the Laurelhurst neighborhood Tree Chip – raised a record-setting amount of money this year. R and I helped out throughout the day, covering a pick-up route, and then helping lop the trees for hauling away. It was cloudy and cold, but not uncomfortable. And, it’s gratifying to see R slowly begin to take his role seriously. He performed his job on the route admirably, and stuck with the tree lopping right to the very end. Toward the end of the session, he jumped up in to the dumpsters full of tree branches and helped pack everything down – a bit of playful work there at the end for a kid who’s come a long way.

R also attended X’s birthday party on Saturday evening. He got his compatriot fix; left him happier and more satisfied, to be sure.

Sunday afternoon, R tackled a large school assignment, completed it, and had some Wii and family time before bed.

*  *  *  *

As for M, she had a great weekend doing not much. She shopped with C and MF on Saturday. On Sunday, she announced it was ‘pajama day’ and proceeded to finish her homework, do some personal art projects, send an electronic card to Grandma Gin, and play some Wii with her Dad and Brother before dinner.

Everything on the down-low.

*  *  *  *

I so hope this becomes a theme for 2010 – quiet weekends with some down-time and some quality family time. Activities like cooking together, getting mental recharge time, calming the heck down. The year’s still in its infancy; but we’re well on our way to creating the new approach.

Here’s a case-in-point to that end: we’re planning a family ski day in a couple weeks. C got our gear sorted out over the weekend, thereby resolving more than half the logistical issues for the first trip of the season. We’ll glide into that ski day with a lot less stress because we’ve planned ahead. Nice.

So, the Typhoon seems to be seeking the calm. Perhaps that will result in fewer posts to the family blog. Afterall, when not much is happening, there’s less to share. It’s a paradigm shift, both instantaneous and slow/deliberate.

Return of the “Nice-to-Do” task

To walk around Dragonfly this Monday morning, it would seem like very little got accomplished over the weekend. But things are not always what they seem, are they? We’ve worked through an amazing list of must-d0 items; we’ve been delaying virtually every nice-to-do task on the list for well over a month.

Sure, there are still boxes to process. But,in many cases, the box that’s in the house is not the same box that was there on Friday.

Other things that moved along at Dragonfly over the weekend:

• R’s bunkbeds are assembled. I had to buy some replacement fastener hardware to assemble his bed. That took a lot of mixing/matching time at the hardware store to complete.
• C and I have a real bed finally. The frame was put together on Friday, but the mattress and box springs were still at the other house. We brought them over on Sunday morning.
• The garage was overhauled, fixing the blessing of unexpectedly effective movers, by accomplishing the following:
  • still-packed items organized in the center of the garage
  • Final shelving units assembled around the garage periphery, ready to receive their stored items
  • emptied boxes cleared.
• Outdoor furniture was unwrapped and placed. The Chiminea is reassembled, too.
• Curtain rods are installed in all three bedrooms.
• Family room was organized and consolidated.
• We determined that the old big-screen television will cost too much to repair. We’re opting to buy a new LCD unit after Thanksgiving. Getting a new TV is a nice-to-do for which we can pick the timing that works best for us.

Thankfully, Mondays are trash days at Dragonfly. I put out a stack of cardboard boxes for the recycle truck that would have filled the back of the mini-van to the gills. They’re going to shake their heads at me when they find my pile! Of course, I still  have a pile of similar size that I didn’t take to the curb…

But … that’s not all. The real work happened over at the cottage, getting it prepared:

• Removed last contents, including mattresses and box springs.
• Cleared and cleaned the basement.
• Cleared and cleaned the kitchen.
• Winterized the yard, including:
  • mowed and edged lawn
  • cut back all flowers, roses, etc.
  • Raked yard, cleared leaves from Chestnut tree.
  • packed away hoses and sprinklers.
  • applied lawn winterizer

So, by the end of the day today, the other house should be ready to receive new occupants. Oh, except for the water treatment system I need to uninstall. That’ll be tonight or tomorrow.

C has opted to hire some house cleaners to the the vacant house cleaning. It’s money well spent; reclaiming two days of her hard labor just prior to her surgery is a wise use of resources. With the other house finished, C can turn her attention to finishing the inside at Dragonfly and writing, not running all  over the Portland metro area.

Back at Dragonfly, I should be able to get the surplus appliances onto Craigslist by the end of the week. I can reach them now, which lets me take photos.

The living room is starting to look like a room, not a pile of boxes. Same for the kitchen nook. The kids’ bedrooms are clearing out, and the master is starting to take shape as a usable room. Kitchen, upstairs bathrooms and upstairs hallways are still chaotic, but that will be changing today and tomorrow. The office is usable, but most of the office-related boxes are still just stacked neatly in a corner of the office.

The kitchen is increasingly functional; we can move around in the space now. We’re cooking. We can find food in the cabinets. The dishwasher is running daily. We’re making coffee. Yeah, pretty much there in the kitchen.

The laundry is working, accessible, and in use. Clean clothes now have a place to go, in the form of accessible and operational closets and dressers. So the clothing and closet bottlenecks have been removed.

Apparently, the landing at the top of the stairs has been designated a practice space for M. A mirror and a ballet barre will reside there, for her use. Apparently I will be swapping the location on some mirrors in the house to accommodate the ballet practice area.

I can reach my workbench and tools. Handy, since I’m called upon to use both to accomplish my long list of tasks. The pile of boxes from last week’s move has been worked into an orderly, logical arrangement.

Remember last week, when I noted that having an overwhelmed garage because the movers overachieved would ultimately save me time and effort? Seems I was right. It took me four hours to fix the garage arrangement on Saturday morning. Had I been ferrying loads over from the other house as originally planned, it would have taken me six loads minimum, at two hours round-trip or more. Four hours of box stacking definitely beats twelve hours of box-ferrying.

If boxes continue to empty at the same rate as this last week, we should have a mostly organized house (nearly clear of boxes, anyway), and one car in the garage by the end of next weekend.

You know, it’s easy to say “we unpacked in two weeks!” and call it a victory. It is a victory, afterall. BUT, this process started exactly a year ago, when we made the hard decision to put our house on the market. We’ve been living in ever-increasing degrees of limbo ever since. My family is tired of being in limbo.

So it is compelling for us all that we should be able to return, this week even,  to a more normal schedule.  A schedule including time for Fencing and other activities. I still have a lot to do. But the urgency of the tasks is dropping off. There are more nice-t0-do’s than must-do’s. And that is a measure of forward progress.

Change Is Afoot

The original plan was to put nice, high-grade Stainmaster carpet upstairs in the bedrooms, then maybe swap in some hardwoods on the main floor over time.

C worked some great deals with some otherwise idle floor install contractors. One of these guys apparently had a whole bunch of surplus  Brazilian Cherry that he hasn’t been able to unload for a LONG time. So long that, instead of $22/sqft, he’s installing it at our house for $7/sqft.

So, C has Brazilian Cherry going into the main entry, dining room, hallway, living room and dining nook area. The office will stay carpet; the kitchen and powder room will stay tile.

Instead of high-grade Stainmaster upstairs, C is backing down to a lower grade of carpet (still VERY nice) and working a similar deal with an installer who’s idle and will work VERY affordably.

I’ll try to post a couple photos. This is C pinching pennies at her finest. We thought we had a good deal for new floors in ONE third of the house. WE DID have a good deal, in fact – half price on the carpet from Marion’s because it was a remainder roll. But now? Now, for just a bit more, we're replacing the floor in TWO thirds of the house. With carpet *and* hardwood.

Change is afoot; problem solved.

UPDATE [10/8/09]:  I took some pictures yesterday of the raw wood floor installed. These guys move fast. Today they’ll finish installing the final three feet at the front door, then move on to sanding and finishing. At 3PM or so, they’ll put down the scratch coat finish. We have to let it cure overnight, so no work on the house for ME tonight.

Kitchen Countertops

Just in case you haven't seen how the stone countertops turned out.

 

Did You Know?

If you play your cards right, and you show up in the stonecutter's store at just the right time, you can get custom-installed slab granite countertops for your house in less than 24 hours?

It can be done. C did it.

Never thought I'd see that...

Oh. Almost forgot -- the countertops are fabulous!

Mixed Bag of News

So, here's a weekend update with a mixed bag of newsy tidbits.

• C had a series of MRIs at the end of December. Two of the three came back negative, which is positive. What I mean is, the MRIs so far don't show any new cancer tumors.
• The MRIs did give a detailed accounting of how much arthritis C is working through, and precisely where. The docs will be turning their attention from teasing out any metastatic tumors to managing arthritis. It's a much more mundane - and reassuring situation, arthritis.
  
• People are calling to see the Stark Street house. That's great!
• M recorded her own composition at music class this last week. I'll post
  it separately. C listened to it with M and the music teacher last
  night. C mentioned that she was impressed with the quality (as a
  partial and proud mom should). The teacher responded that he was rather
  impressed too, that normally compositions don't turn out as nicely as
  this one did.
• I met an old friend after work last week. I'm guessing she'd rather go unidentified in the blog, but we were close through college and for a number of years afterward. It seems that a little time with her was good for my soul, somehow. To speak of our conversation and say "I needed it" isn't accurate. To say "I wanted it" also isn't quite right. I was certainly looking forward to our meeting, and enjoyed seeing her, and I came away a better person for having spent some time together. I'm grateful for that.
  
• R gave a speech to his fifth grade class earlier in the week. It went quite well, i was told.
• We're back to the kind of weather one would expect from January in Portland. Temps int he 40's, grey dull skies, a bit of rain. The monotony is welcome now that we can hold up three weeks of Minnesota-style winter for comparison.
  
• Weather service announced this week that we're in a La Nina year. Again. We had one of those last year, too. La Nina explains why we had snow in Portland in April. We might not be done with the unpredictable cold snaps yet this winter. I'll keep the tire chains within reach.
• C is sick today. Flu sick. Poor thing. It came on suddenly. She started her day fine, but was green and nauseous within the hour. She got through her obligations, vomited a couple times throughout the day, and went to bed when we got back home at 2:30 or so. A couple hours later, she's still sleeping. I really don't expect to hear from her again until morning.
• M returned to ballet classes today. For her, that was a signal of the return to normalcy. I think she was glad to be back. For the rest of the afternoon, I noticed her quietly doing ballet footwork whenever she was being patient for something or someone. Yeah. She's glad to be back.
• We only finished our 2007 taxes six weeks ago, but we're nearly ready to start submitting our paperwork for our 2008 taxes. We haven't been on a proper tax schedule since the cancer diagnosis in 2005. To enter 2009 ready to start filing our return as soon as Jan 31, is a great feeling.
  
• I took down the holiday lights this afternoon. It's good to have that done.
• I have a handful of small household projects to work on over the weekend. Little things like installing vinyl floor moldings along the laundry area to give a finished look there. Minor, really. I like that. We'll do enough big work once moving time comes around.In the meantime, I'm trying to 'rest' whenever and however I can.
  

I don't seem to have much to say that's philosophical or profound at the moment. I'm grateful for many things, and am hopeful, given these crazy, unexpected times. There are many other good things going on that are outside the scope of this blog. Should only a portion of them come to pass, I will feel unusually blessed in these times.

Mental Snapshots

One of R:

He's in his Boy Scout uniform, on the indoor basketball court at the church where the meetings are held. Impulsively, he does a front handspring, just missing sticking the landing. I had seen him do the front, but only on a trampoline or tumbletrack, not on a solid floor without any spring to it.


One of M:

She's playing the piano. Two handed. It's a simple piece, but it has chords sprinkled throughout the mostly single-note melody. She has to switch modes and rapidly move her hands to chords. It's hard work, learning that transition. But with each time through the piece, her transition time shortens and the tempo of the piece improves. The energy wrapped around her as she does this exercise? calm and satisfaction. Learning new skills on the piano seems to relax her, not make her tense. Because of this, I love it when she practices; her calmness spreads to me whenever she plays.


I'm overdue to post some video pieces. I'd better fix that.

Readying for Winter

The front porch is, as of yesterday, ready for winter. We did a number of little things here over the past few weeks. The mailbox is new; gone is the little mail tray thing that was attached to the window frame. Now we have a family-sized, locking box. Better. I, uh, poured the concrete for the mailbox myself, you know...

 

A couple weeks ago, I removed the front screen door. This resulted in our needing to do some rehabilitation on the door frame (scraping, sanding, hole-filling, painting) to finish up.

C and I tag-teamed the work, a bit here  and a bit there, until C finished it yesterday with a fresh coat of paint all around the porch. All traces of the screen door are now removed, and the front entry just gleams.

Remember how we started? No? Well, prepare yourself. Like this:

Constance*

I put some time into the Jaguar over the weekend. The car's condition is a bit of an unknown quantity right now ... when was the last time it was waxed? Oil changed? ... you know, all that jazz. Because I got the car on consignment, it didn't get any dealer detailing attention. So I gave her a basic all-over detail this weekend. While the weather is still nice, you know...

• Hand wash
• Hand wax
• Wheel chrome polished and waxed
• Tires conditioned and blackened
• Detail brush along all edges and grooves (thanks for that simple, elegant tool, Paula!)
• Engine degreased
• Engine compartment rain gutters cleared of all pine needles, and 'gunk'
• Engine compartment plastic parts refreshed with protectant, for a like-new shine
• Trunk contents organized (first aid kit, tool kit, roadside assist kit, etc.)
• Trunk rain gutters cleaned and polished
• Floor mats cleaned of all grime spots

It took about half my day, but she gleams now. Inside and out. Ready for winter. Here's the engine, just as an example:

See what I mean? The plastics are once again clean and well-conditioned.  That just-built sheen has returned to the exposed metal bits. The scattering of pine needles are gone.

Sunday afternoon, R walked up to the car - unaware that I'd detailed it the day before - and casually ran his hand along the rear fender, just as a daydreaming boy is likely to do.

"Hey! The car's been waxed!" he hollered, surprised and excited. I was flattered, personally. He's not really one to notice things like that. It jumped out at him THIS time, though. He made my day.

I also spent time on the garage this weekend; I finished the interior painting. The garage doors themselves needed paint, as did a few stray 'missed spots' on the walls. Once I tidied up the paint, the next logical step was to finally organize my tools and equipment. It was great to be organizing the space. The garage looks good and, with a detailed car emitting the odors of wax and protectant, smells good too!

The kids were pleased to end the weekend with their computer now properly ensconced in the common room upstairs, instead of hiding out on my basement workbench. I succeeded in getting the desk moved up from the basement, and verified that their shared PC would both connect to the internet and connect to the wi-fi enabled printer. They're all hooked up now, and ready to do their homework as needed, in their own environment.

Which leads me to the basement itself. Organization there continues. We're steadily putting things in an order that makes sense, the end result being a sense of 'spaciousness' instead of oppressive clutter. It's good.

 

* Some, but not all, of my vehicles had names.

	Car	Name
1984 - 1989	1978 Honda Civic	Gertrude
1989 - 1994	1989 Honda Accord Coupe
1991 - 1993	1986 Saab 900 Turbo	Bette
1993 - 2006	1992 Isuzu Trooper	Bessie
1995 - 1998	1995 Kawasaki GPZ1100	Prudence
1997 - 2005	1996 Pontiac Grand Am
2005 - 2008	1992 Mercedes E300 4matic	Babych
2006 - now	2006 Honda Odyssey	Ulysses
2008	1994 Mercedes S320
2008 - now	2004 Jaguar XJ8	Constance

The Death of YAHRSU

As you read The Eye Of The Storm, You may have noticed the deluge of comments from my thousands of dedicated readers asking why I haven't given any updates on the progress of the cottage remodel.

Okay, well... me 'neither. My readership is just not that comment-driven, I've learned. But I'm sure hundreds of you have all been silently checking in, dying to ask me about the cottage progress, right? Right?

No, probably not. In my heart, I know that. Really, I do.

Truth is, the dozens of readers I have are probably damned glad that I'm no longer constantly pinging their RSS aggregator with YAHRSU - Yet Another House Remodel Status Update. Privately, they're all celebrating but still fearful. Afraid to mention the lack of YAHRSU for fear that either 1) their comment will lack sufficient tact and hurt my feelings, or 2) worse yet, I'll miss the point and start posting YAHRSU once again under the guise of 'back by popular demand!' It's like that irritating dripping faucet that finally, inexplicably stops dripping. On the one hand, be glad; on the other hand, DON'T DARE touch it - it might start dripping again!

No, no. It's okay. I can see the difficulty of the situation. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if my entire readership (all seven of you!) have started a private blog somewhere in a remote corner, safe from my prying eyes, where you all laugh at my posts and blow off your frustration by complaining in safety.

Well, you know what? That's the story itself! There is no YAHRSU.

 

I HAVEN'T DONE ANYTHING TO THE HOUSE WORTHY OF A REPORT!

That's where we're at! We're effectively done. We're just enjoying the weather, getting the school year schedule in place, sleeping a little more, turning on the TV here and there, messing around with Mindstorms and piano, and putting off the remaining interior finish work until the winter rains chase us back inside.

 

DON'T EXPECT MANY HOUSE REPORTS IN THE FUTURE, EITHER!

Mainly because there won't be much to write about. I've posted a couple new views to the Before/After portfolion, and I'll post a few more, but that's about it.

Come see it at Christmas time, while the lights on Peacock Lane are blazing (Dec 15-31).

• Drop in.
• Say Hi.
• Sing a Carol with us.
• Bring your own musical instrument.
• Have a snack.
• BRING a snack, if you feel like it!
• Watch all the people.
• Marvel at the lack of paint on our hair, clothes and cuticles.
• Comment on how rested we look this year!

WHEW!

Like my readers, I'm rather glad I'm done. Except for one burning question...what will I blog about now?

I'm sure I'll find stuff....

Informal Housewarming - Follow-Up

It was good. Could almost leave it at that and be done. Having S (C's sister) and her husband, K, around was delightful. Using their visit as a deadline for getting the house in order was also good. By the end of Saturday, the house was deep cleaned like never before. We rearranged the master bedroom a bit to make it more functional as well as pleasing. It's no surprise that we're still tuning our room; it was the last room we even considered organizing.

The front yard looks good. The back yard magnetically drew the adult guests. The playroom, loaded with toys, became the kids' hangout. All of them (six total, ranging from 11 to 20 mo) played together with much better than expected harmony and delight. The rest of the house was lovely and admired by all. Then, out to the back yard to enjoy the open air, the garden and the shade they went!

After dark, with the yard lights in place and the chiminea alight, the adults did NOT migrate back inside, but stayed put. Some talked deep into the night. With a 2000-2200 sq ft house, 1,500 sq ft of back patio, this place lives awful big.

Overnighting accomodations included the boys in the boys' room, girls in the girls' room, and parents in the common room. Everyone seemed well placed and satisfied.

An interesting fact of the house I did not fully realize: from the patio, sound from the upstairs common room is easily heard through the open skylights. Monitoring the interactions upstairs is much easier than I would have guessed. Can't make out exact words, but can definitely determine if the sounds are happy, argumentative, or expressions of distress. That's good. 

Even the relative shortage of toilets did not create a bottleneck. It was manageable. Though I don't think we could live with nine people long-term, a weekend visit with that many people does NOT bring our house to a screeching halt.

So, in other words: the house, tested for it's first sort-of housewarming, worked like a champ.

And it was SO good for all of us to have a day with K and S. I think the Johnsons needed that time. I'm hoping K & S and family had a similar experience.

Time For Photo Updates

Cleaning house for our weekend guests (and to leave a clean place for our return from Badasht). We've done lots of work on the 'house tuning front'. Meaning that many of my AFTER photos need updates because we're now up to, shall we say, POST-MODERNIST AFTER status.

• Low voltage yard lights (15 total) throughout the back yard.
• Low voltage lights now illuminate the east side path and the front yard steps (8 lights).
• Low voltage spots are getting worked in around a couple key landscape items in the front yard (2 more).
• Upgraded the low voltage power pack to handle the actual load of lights.
• Step stones in place in front and east side (thanks to R, M and C).
• SE corner rain gutter replaced with a copper gutter chain (again, thanks to R, M and C).
• Final work to pound down decorative gravel around all the pavers and step stones.
• More bark dust to finish off the front and side.

I need to bury the new lighting wire in the front yard. We need to clean and organize the living space of the house at a minimum. It'd be ideal to clean up my workbench, too, but optional.

If the yard, though, was starting to ''pop' before, it's bounding on a trampoline now. The lights have been an attention to detail that has taken the yard appeal to a whole new level. None of the other houses around us are using outdoor lighting for anything other than a minimal street sign or sidewalk lamps. Now, we have a night time look that includes hightlighted trees as well as illuminated paths. It may be night, but its still a garden; not a dark place.

The comment with M last night was, 'wow, Dad. It looks like Disneyland!'

The coolest part? Mostly we've been financing the lights by returning our surplus materials. They're not really costing us much.

One concern I had was all the electricity that we'd be burning with the yard lights. First, the lights are on a timer, running only for about 5 hours a night. Second, these are low-wattage bulbs. For 25 lamps throughout the house, we're using a total of 250W; averaging 10W per bulb. That's less than our dining room chandelier would use if it ran on incandescent bulbs.

An Informal Housewarming

I'm given to believe that we'll have family visiting on Sunday coming up!

C's sister and her family will be in our area on Sunday. They've not been to the Cottage yet. We kinda' suggested they stay away while we tore into it. Their three kids are younger than R, two of the three are younger than M. We had nightmarish visions of five active kids in an extensive construction zone.

Now, though, we're done. We're spending our time picking up our leftovers, arranging things for beauty (not workable space), and tuning stuff. We're ready to show off the results and feel safe about hosting the cousins!

It'll be great to see them on Sunday. It'll be great to show off the house and take a walk to the big park. It'll be great to talk in the past-tense about darned near everything that happened to this house.

I guess this is a housewarming of sorts. I wonder if we should consider an actual 'housewarming'? We've not discussed one before...wonder how that would go over.

Blog Post Updates

ON THE YARD LIGHTS:  after returning from the beach last night, C and I tweaked the lights. Turns out one whiole 'zone' of lights was not wired up to the power supply. That's why the lights only sorta' worked on Friday. Once I fixed that detail, we got virtually ALL the lights going. We then spent about an hour repositioning and tuning. It became clear right away that, with the lights positioned so as to line the sidewalk, the yard looked... well, contrived. When we started moving the lights back away from the path, into/under/behind plants that we wanted to showcase, the yard started to really *pop*. Suddenly, we could make out the garden's highlights as localized spots. And we still got enough ambient light to help C navigate the path safely.

So, lights are DONE DONE DONE. Really, finally done.

 

ON THE TILTED TWISTER PROJECT:  R and I started the build process for this particular Mindstorms over the weekend. Intriguing process, as we're following computerized build instructions generated by Lego Digital Designer software. It's cool, AND it takes some getting used to.

 

ON THE YARD:  the front yard grass is growing in nicely; big difference over the weekend. It actually looks like a lawn! I need to mow a portion of the front yard tonight! We also have all the yard debris picked up from the front of the house. Just in time, because yard debris pickup day is tomorrow. Once the current batch of juniper branches and cuttings are gone, we're caught up on the yard pile, too!

 

Practically one year to the day we snuck over to the Cottage and performed a sneak attack on the out-of-control yard debris, I can write the following:

All I have is a small list of quickie tweak-and-tune tasks left to complete. Honey, pick up the tools, vacuum the floors, put away the laundry, and hold that garage sale, because we're DONE!

Lights!

So, yesterday after work, I took the plunge and picked up where the landscape contractor had stalled out - wiring up the yard spots.

I cut the intended wire, hooked up a pigtail, and wired the pigtail to the power supply. Then, R got the honor of plugging the power supply into the AC Power. It worked. Sorta.

From the power supply, we now have two separate lines of lights. We got some lights working on both lines. Good. Power seems to be going to both wires properly. We just need to tune the individual wire hookups until all the lights fire up!

We can pretty much take yard lights off the list - just tuning left to be done.

 

R and C worked together yesterday to finish the french drain we've been building along the east side of the house. I helped with the finish-up; they did most of the heavy work. A gravel drainage bed takes the water away from the house and into a french drain that runs toward the street. Buried, so we can grow the lawn right over the drain. One more thing off the list. YES!

 

In the coming month, we'll have a garage sale to clear out the extra stuff. We'll have finished the final tuning work I still have on my list. We'll have grass growing across the entire front yard, and grass filling in throughout the back yard. We'll have the side yard finished. We'll have all the yard debris removed.

Shoot, this is the sort of work I've become accustomed to doing in a weekend. I have a whole month in which to do it. This is heaven.

Seeing Green

Just last night, C  was asking 'will the grass EVER grow?' I assured her it would. This morning, I have clear evidence of germination!

I heard her say these very words last night: "Okay. The front yard's done for the summer. We finished."

Nice!

The back yard gets cleanup, sweep up and tool removal today. The yard lights are scheduled to be fully activated by tonight.

The side yard gets the french drain and the back-fill today. All that remains is my cutting in flagstones to make a pathway. That'll be done within days.

Gee, other than systematic removal of yard debris via the trash hauler, there's precious little left for construction-type projects. Just some fine-grained details in the house that don't have a material effect on our livability (nook bench endcap, front door window panes, pantry roller floor tweaks, trim piece in M's room, bolting down the basement sink, basement workshop cleanup)

Could it really be? Could we be ** DONE ** ?